Prana Crafter

I believe I’ve expressed the notion that the stream of psych-folk seems to have been damned a bit since its early aughts resurgence. That’s not to say that there haven’t been prolific pockets, as speaks to the work of labels Eiderdown and Deep Water Acres, both of whom have nurtured the career of Washington’s Prana Crafter. It’s just that now when an exceptional example comes hurtling through the tubes, I stand up and take notice. Will Sol stands ready with a new cassette release under the Prana Crafter banner for psychedelic wellspring Beyond Beyond is Beyond, and it is certainly an example of psych-folk at its finest. Though, while the excitement of a new poster child for the sound is tempting, I hate to back him into that corner alone, as it seems a disservice to his brand of psychedelia on the whole.

Bhodi Cheetah’s Choice is dank with the moss of the best burrowed forest psych – bubbling acoustic strums in a vat of ozone-scummed guitar. But Sol folds in haunting ambience, via organ moans, electronic thrums and the rhythmic hum of field recordings. He’s imbued the record with an haunting sadness that gives it an otherworldly quality. It’s psych-folk for all intents and purposes, but bigger and more affecting than any one genre can conjure. The label’s not entirely offbase to associate this with the more experimental work of Fahey (see perhaps his work for Table of the Elements), but even as a one-man band he’s pushed this into territories once occupied by heavy improv psych masters ¬– Popul Vuh, Träd, Gräs & Stenar, Amon Düül II.

With this record Sol has marked himself one to watch from here on out. Prana Crafter may well climb the ranks to sit alongside the likes of Six Organs of Admittance and Vanishing Voice-era Wooden Wand in terms of the modern day psychedelic luminaries. Here’s hoping that with enough groundswell BBiB will bump this one up to a full vinyl release rather than the cassette ghetto that Prana Crafter’s found himself in previously. This one deserves the fuller spectrum to spread its discomfiting burn.